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POLITICO 44

The Senate Finance Committee spent more than five hours debating the public health insurance option Tuesday before voting down two Democratic amendments to add it to the bill.

But the one person who will effectively decide its fate wasn’t even in the room.

President Barack Obama got an early look at the depth of the Democratic divide on the government insurance option Tuesday — with Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad saying it would bankrupt North Dakota’s hospitals and Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) saying it’s the only way to rein in ravenous, profit-hungry private insurers.

Now, squabbling Democrats are looking to the president to be the final arbiter of whether they include the public option in the version of the bill that goes to the Senate floor — and later, whether it will emerge in compromise legislation from a House-Senate conference.

In the Senate, Obama will work closely with Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who speaks with White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel several times a day. But the final decision rests almost entirely on the president’s shoulders.

“Expect the president and his staff to be key participants in the tough decisions we have to make, on such issues as the level of subsidies and the public plan versus the co-ops,” said a senior Democratic Senate aide. “The only way we are going to get this done is with active involvement of the president.”

Public-option supporters are fine with that. They say they’ll take their chance with Obama at the helm because he’s declined every public opportunity to remove the government option from the table.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who voted for both public option amendments, said she wants the White House to make its position clear, if it expects the bill to drive down the cost of private insurance.

“They should weigh in,” Cantwell said Tuesday.

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) even describes Obama as the Democrats’ “cleanup hitter” who will mediate the dispute — noting approvingly that Obama has always said he wants the public option.

The Republican Base is made up of the biggest damn fools in the world. It is so easy to play them for suckers, to scare and manipulate them.

They are foot soldiers for the insurance companies, recruited under various false flags, and will never figure out how they have been played--not even when the individual mandates to buy private health insurance go into effect and those companies will be charging anything they want.

Suckers.

Obama will sign that bill. He'll sign whatever they put in front of him. That's why he let Congress write all it, so that every special interest in country got its back scratched.

And what people like Baucus, Grassley and the rest are really afraid of is that the public option will be TOO popular, as Medicare is, and that it will have a constituency, like Social Security and Medicare.

The insurance companies don't want that, and its hired politicians are trying to make sure no one has that choice, but they will make sure that people have no choice except to buy private insurance from them.

Insurance companies have no real constituency, of course, unless they buy it, or whip up a bunch of dummies who don't even know what's happening.

You have to listen to the president. He has said that the public option is just a sliver of healthcare. He will not expend any more political capital on something that is inconsequential. like the public option.

And what people like Baucus, Grassley and the rest are really afraid of is that the public option will be TOO popular, as Medicare is

The latest theme of liberals is that government healthcare will become just like putting everyone on Medicare. The idea behind Medicare is that you pay into it your entire life paying for people over 65. When you reach 65 then you have your healthcare paid from the trust fund (yes, I know the government has it all borrowed and owe it) and from the next generation of workers who pay into it. Liberals have decided it sounds good and will try to make uneducated people think the whole company can now go on Medicare. It is a dishonest representation and something that even the least astute poster knows is impossible.

Remember those "tough choices" you told us the rest of us the previous administration didn't make, Mr. president? When are you going to make one?

He's made quite a few tough choices. You're confusing the term with Bush's"tough choices" which were really just stupid choices. I love all you people who say you've won the game when the other team hasn't even taken the feild yet. You need to pace yourself or it's going to be a tough 8 years for you, at the very least.